On my desktop there is the icon of My Computer. I press it in order
to see all the files. Under Home folder I can see the files that I
wrote or made. But when I press File System I can't see the hard
disks! (I partitioned the other hard disk which has windows XP and I
tried to see it in Linux Ubuntu too).
Now it seems that there is a sign of a lock next to the File system.
I can't unlock it. If I press right click, I find properties. If I
look for permissions it tells me that I'm not the owner!!! What can I
do to unlock it and see the hard disks. I know that they are ok with
ubuntu because I've seen them from the terminal window but I need to
see them from the desktop too in order to put some common files for
both windows and ubuntu in this newly created partition.
I'm using Ubuntu 6.10 and gnome 2.16.1 I use dual boot.
Thanks for your patience!

Daniel,
This isn't the appropriate mailing list to ask these kinds of questions
on (the ubuntu-users mailing list would probably be best in this case),
but since you asked nicely I will try to help you :-)
On Unix/Linux systems, you need to "mount" a device like a hard disk in
order to access the files on it. By default, only the root user can do
this. I am not an Ubuntu user, but I am pretty sure this is the "Ubuntu"
way to configure this:
1) Open a terminal
2) type in: sudo mkdir /mnt/shared
3) type in: gksu gedit /etc/fstab
4) Add a line like this to the file:
/dev/hda1 /mnt/shared ntfs defaults,user 0 0
If the filesystem of the drive is FAT, you should change "ntfs" to
"vfat". Also, in this example, I am assuming that the partition
is /dev/hda1, which is probably the first partition on your drive. If
it's a different partition, you might have to change this number.
Now you should be able to mount the partition by typing
"mount /mnt/shared" in a terminal window. If you reboot, it should also
be mounted. You will find the partition at /mnt/shared
Since this isn't really a Gnome question, if this doesn't work out for
you (and I hope it does), I advise you to seek further help on one of
the Ubuntu mailing lists, or on the Ubuntu IRC channel. And I hope you
enjoy using Gnome!
--
Evan Klitzke